From its 8-megapixel touchscreen Renoir to the quirky Qwerty keyboard packing KS360, LG has recently been big on offering something a bit different. Touch-sensitive controls, high-end multi-megapixel cameras, novel user interfaces - LG's been busy grabbing attention. But now with its KF300 flip phone, LG has taken a more conventional, low-key approach.
Exclusive to Orange in the UK, the KF300 is far from a high-flier, and has already been available in some other countries. It's pitched at phone buyers after something that's not too complicated, does the job for calling and texting, but that looks OK too. The features spec is down-range, though not quite bare-bones basic. It doesn't do fancy 3G multimedia stuff, but has got a 2-megapixel camera, an onboard MP3 player, and an FM radio among its phone essentials. MicroSD card support means you can also carry up to 2GB of tunes around with you.
Design and handling
The KF300 is a slim-ish and reasonably attractive clamshell design, with some chrome edging, and an almost lenticular steel blue patterning reflecting light and catching the eye under the smooth plastic front panel. There's a small LCD screen hidden away under the panel that lights up when roused, with a clock, standby or call information displayed.
LG has focused in on 'easy to use' though with this phone's design. It's not the smallest clamshell phone around; measuring 98.8(h) x 49.5(w) x 16.2(d)mm closed, giving it quite a large footprint. Flip open the shell, though, and you see that LG's used the spacious dimensions to make it's buttonry loud and clear - the numberpad keys are big and broad, with number and letter labelling distinctly large.
Unusually too, on the other half of the clamshell, directly under the 2.2-inch screen, there's a row of buttons, marked with icons for hotkey shortcuts to specific functions - alarm clock, calendar, image gallery and favourites (users can create their own customised shortcut list of features, though the MP3 player is the out-of-the-box list-topper).
These are a key part of LG's approach to making easy the KF300's operation. It's more giving a helping hand than coming up with something completely novel or patronisingly over-simplified - LG has also included more conventional ways to navigate menus and use shortcuts. A typical navigation directional pad sits above the numberpad with standard call and end buttons and a pair of softkeys flanking the D-pad. There's also a clearly labelled button for firing up the camera.
In standby, shortcuts are assigned to the navigation pad controls (text messages, contacts, music player, ringtone profiles), which, to help users, are displayed graphically onscreen. As usual, these can be changed or hidden by dipping into the settings menu. It's all familiar LG stuff; the main menu set-up is a regular grid of icons, with further sub menus listed with numbered options next to them for quick selection.
Out of the box, menu fonts are super-sized - presumably for people with eyesight issues. This can be easily adjusted to suit your own tastes though; we found the larger size actually hampered quick scanning of and easy scrolling through menu options.
The buttons ranged under the nicely size QVGA, 262K-colour display are generally a good idea for technophobes or the non tech-savvy user who recoil from detailed phone menus. Strangely enough, they're similar to hotkey arrangements used on some of Nokia's high-end Eseries business phones. One slight issue we had was when using softkey options. When these appear in the bottom left or right of the screen, users may instinctively find themselves tapping the hotkey directly under them (opening up alarms or favourites) rather than pressing the much further away softkey buttons on the lower half of the phone. We guess that's just something users will have to learn not to do.
